TOLL OF DEPRESSION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 98, 28 April 1933, Page 7

TOLL OF DEPRESSION.

Hardship Gnaws at Physical Standards. SOCIAL DETERIORATION. LONPON, April 21. Following three years' depression, signs of physical and social deterioration are becoming increasingly evident throughout tho world, especially among children and mothers, declares the "Manchester Guardian." Exhaustive inquiry by the "Save the Children International Union" reveals that the children of unemployed display rapid fatigue after mental or bodily effort, and even inability to make any effort, as well as lowered resistance to infectious disease, protracted convalescence, and an increase in rickets, tuberculosis, dental caries and pellagra. The report gives sickening details of the conditions in Germany, where boys of 10 are obliged to wear girls' tattered underclothing. They are extraordinarily voracious and often beg bread at school as they have none at home. The German authorities state that the children are not stunted, aa in war time, but their faces are pale and swollen. Absences from school are frequent owing to under-nourishment, and children are slack and listless in the classrooms. American reports are even more heartrending. British health officers declare that the chief sufferers are "toddlers," who are often grossly deformed. The malnutrii ■ of mothers frequently results in pre-natal disease and rickets is increasing among breastfed babies. The mothers deny themselves in order to enable their husbands and elder children to be better fed. The standard of nutrition of many unemployeda is little better than in war time, and mortality is increasing in some districts.

The "Manchester Guardian" emphasises that the terrible cost of _ war depression in sanity and health is revealed in the hysteria of the Nazis, whose excesses are partly due to long privation.